One Good Shot

Golf.

What can I say about his wonderful sport? Well, some believe that it was invented by the Scottish to forever take revenge on Englishmen (and the rest of the world by association) for all the terrible things that the English did while Scotland was under its control. Some even say that William Wallace himself was working on a rudimentary version of the game when he was captured and tortured. These believers in “wallf ” (Wallace’s name for the sport) also believe that his famous last word was not “freedom” as portrayed in history and on film. Instead, they believe that Wallace suddenly had an epiphany during torture about what would confound the English for hundreds of years to come and screamed out “three par.” It only sounded like “freedom” because he was gargling his own blood at the time. These people also believe that Picard was better than Kirk…so some might say that their coconut has rolled right off the table.

Anyone who has read my work knows that I have an ongoing love/hate relationship with this majestic/sadistic sport of gentlemen (and guys like me). It seems that at certain times of the year my brain blocks out all of the past frustrations of this demon game and find myself with the desire to step out onto the golf course to face the space/time continuum holes and raging, mutated squirrels. My friend John was in town a couple of weeks ago and we had made plans to play a round of golf while he was here. The last time I played golf with John, earlier in the year, I only lost two balls and hit most of my shots relatively straight (none of them went more than 50 yards into the wilderness) so golf’s past indiscretions against me seemed a distant memory. I’m such a fool.

There are really two types of golfers…Pros and Schmos. The Pros category consists mainly of people who make money playing golf (professional golfers on tours, club professionals, people who win money in tournaments) with the exception of that guy (and everyone knows one of these guys) that constantly makes bets on friendly outings. If you are one of these “betting golfers” then I urge you to stop now, this is not a road you want to go down. At first it is friendly and everyone is having fun betting on ridiculous shots through the trees and who can sink the longest put. But soon you start trying harder to get better so that you can beat your friends. You think it is a matter of pride, but it is really the beginning of a downhill spiral. After a while you find yourself hanging around outside the clubhouses, waiting for someone who needs a fourth player so that you play crappy until the third hole (the par five with the dog-leg right and the sand trap) and then start betting on distance drives and gimmick chips. The next phase is put-put courses, where you wander around like a mendicant betting on shots past dragons and through windmills. From there comes the public phase, where you stop random people in the street and ask them if they want to see you ricochet a golf ball off a statue and hit that bike messenger in the head for five bucks. Finally you find yourself at home, alone, masturbating to the Golf Channel (using your own tears as lubrication) and making bets with yourself on whether you can sink the put under your coffee table and into the water glass. So, for your own sake (and the sake of that bike messenger) please stop making bets on the links. Making money while gambling on the golf course does not qualify you as a professional.

The Schmos are broken down into two categories (Amateurs and Weekend Warriors) which in turn are broken down into sub-categories.

Amateurs
Private Amateurs: These are the guys who join private clubs and have enough money to play three times a week during the season. Many Private Amateurs play in local and regional tournaments just are just not good enough to win prize money or excel to the next level. These are the guys who buy the special “swing enhancing” double hinged driver in order to straighten their drives and have the club pro on speed dial in their cell phones in case they accidentally chip a shot into the taller herbage. These guys will often be seen walking instead of driving a cart.

Public Amateurs: These are the guys who frequent public courses more than twice in a week. Most of the time these guys are older gentlemen who play in the mornings, but in the early afternoon the guys who don’t work (yet somehow have money for golf) wake-up and come stumbling in. Most of the time you will find these Public Amateurs traveling in foursomes: one guy who keeps score, one guy who can hits long tee shots but sucks on the short game, one guy who hits good chip shots, and the last guy is the sporadic guy who has brief moments of genius coupled with moments of complete ineptitude. Public Amateurs can be assholes a lot of times because they actually think that they are “mini-Pros” because they play a lot. They often make up the majority of the roster at local company tournaments and charity scrambles. This sub-category is where most of the “betting golfers” come from.

Weekend Warriors*
Kull the Conquerors: Do you know the guys that you see throwing up behind a tree on the 15^th fairway? Or maybe you’ve witnessed the guys that crest a hill at the cart’s top speed of 7 and spill empty beer cans from the back? These are the guys that give weekend golfers a bad name because most people think of these guys when they think about golfers who can only manage to get out on the course three or four times a year. You can spot these guys off the course by searching for certain clues like golf ball shaped dents in their foreheads that resulted from teeing off and turning around to find their equally drunk buddy also teeing off without waiting or warning. Other Kulls can be weeded out during conversation because their praise of the game of golf often starts like this… “I love golf. There’s nothing like grabbing a case of beer and heading out for a game with buddies.” Did you catch that? When the first thing they think about when thinking about golf is that it gives them an excuse to drink with friends then they are defiantly a Kull.

Conan the Barbarians: These are the guys who just enjoy the game of golf in general and like getting out as much as they can...which is usually only two or three times a year. They don’t worry if the clubs they use are a few years old or if the balls they are hitting with are not the best. Conans are often critical of their performance on the course (and may even write a blog or two about them) but often have fun even when their game sucks goat balls. Most Conans play a round of golf just for the enjoyment of the game without the pressures of being really good. More often than not Conans don’t care if they beat the others they are playing with because they realize that the game was invented to test oneself. Conans realize that the only person you are playing against is yourself. As my friend John explained it… “Guys like us play for that one shot.” That one shot that you hit and think to yourself ‘Damn, that’s one of the best shots I have ever hit.’ I fall into this last category.

So, when John and I went out to play a couple of weeks ago I was only playing for that one good shot. The morning was already getting thick with humidity as John and I parked our cart beside the 10^th tee box (we were starting on the back 9). John had the honors of the first tee and, uncharacteristically, did not hit it to the right. Instead it looped to the left and almost hit some groundskeepers. It was a good tone for improvement. Then it was my turn. I set my feet, took a puff off of the cigarette clenched in my teeth, checked my direction, and just let loose with a nice easy swing to open the day. Yet, during that nice easy swing I felt the black holes in the distant galaxy of Poog 6 align and create a vortex that caused my body to follow the correct motion for a golf swing resulting in a distinctive ping that signaled my club striking the ball in the perfect spot. I lifted my head on the follow through and saw my ball racing away, straight and true. A tear rolled from the corner of my eye as I watched the ball land on the fairway at around the 215 yard mark, not because I had just witnessed the best drive of my life…but because I realized that I had just blown my wad.

Yes…I had in fact hit “that one shot” and thus, having wasted it on my first shot, I was ruined for the rest of the day. Every drive after that was an effort to regain the majesty of my opening swing, and eventually I watched helplessly as ball after ball was condemned to the Magical Land of Oz Country Club (which is just a slice to the right and over the trees away). John, on the other hand, progressively got better and had several excellent shots that he could be proud of. Everything seemed bleak until the last hole where I realized that in the past my game had been hindered by such things as “magic tees.” So I broke the tee that I had been using all day and made a pact with (threatened the existence of) my equipment.

Me: (talking to my new tee) See that? See what happens? Why do you make me do that? Why do you make me hurt you? How about you help me out with this drive so that you don’t spontaneously break like that last tee.
Tee:..............

Apparently this worked because my drive was straight (only the second of the day). Upon reaching my ball and preparing for my chip I decided that my current strategy was working. Thus, my conversation with my four iron went like this…

Me: Now it’s up to you. I’ll make the same deal with you as I did the tee. Don’t shank it to the right and you can continue not being wrapped around that tree.
Four Iron: How about you do it yourself. I’m just an inanimate object that you are talking to in the middle of a golf course.
(It had me there, so I responded maturely to lessen my current image of a loon)
Me: Shut up stupid club!

John was laughing by this point so, with no other choice, I chipped a nice shot to land on the edge of the green. We won’t go into the conversation that I had with my putter, but let’s just say that putters know a lot about logic, metaphysics, and atomic equations.

I finished the day with a bogey.

*Note: The names for the Weekend Warriors, Kull the Conqueror and Conan the Barbarian, were used because they are essentially the same guy (they were both characters by Robert E. Howard), but Kull was a dim, poorly executed version of Conan.